8o 
NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 
branches have been weighed down by their loads of fruit. And this 
great and unusual productiveness has been seen in some of our 
agarics. The common mushroom, Agaricus campester, was never 
before known by me to be more plentiful in our State. It began to 
make its appearance earlier than usual, generous crops being found 
early in August, and it continued to appear in great abundance until 
cold weather stopped its growth. Even moderate frost does not 
stop its development, for sometimes, as during the autumn of 1895, 
and also of 1896, plentiful gatherings of it were made after the ground 
had been white with frost. The markets of Albany have recently 
been supplied with an unusual abundance of them. They have been 
exposed for sale by dealers on whose stands they have rarely if ever 
before been seen. They have been peddled about the streets and 
offered for sale at the low price of fifteen cents a quart. Farmers in 
the vicinity of our large cities have found in them a volunteer crop of 
their pastures that has added no insignificant amount to their in¬ 
comes. A correspondent writing from Utica says that the crop of 
the common mushroom in Oneida county was of extraordinary 
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abundance and that the mushrooms were sold in Utica by farmers 
and peddlers at twenty cents a quart and that he never before knew 
them to be plentiful enough to be sold at retail in this way. 
Another correspondent, who resides in an adjoining State, and 
who is an enthusiastic mycophagist, writes that he has at last had a 
sufficiency of mushrooms, and that they have been offered for sale 
at his door in such quantity that he has been obliged to decline to 
purchase them even at the extremely low price of five cents a quart. 
A newspaper report affirms that in a village in the western part of the 
State mushrooms were sold in lots of ten quarts for twenty-five cents, 
a rate of two and a half cents a quart. This is a good illustration of 
the effect of a bountiful supply upon the price of an article. 
